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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021872">In My Dreams</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80'>jane_x80</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCIS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Christmas Cards, Episode: s07e10 Faith, Gen, Letters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:08:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,594</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony goes home after work, he goes through his mail and receives a card that hits him hard.</p><p>For <a href="https://ncis-discuss.livejournal.com/258177.html">Day 12 of the 2020 Happy Holidays Challenge on LiveJournal</a>, the theme is Holiday Cards. Another story in collaboration with Red_Pink_Dots and her fabulous artwork.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>138</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In My Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/gifts">Red_Pink_Dots</a>.</li>


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28009110">Art for In My Dreams</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots">Red_Pink_Dots</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the fourth  of the collaboration efforts for the Happy Holidays Challenge with my dearest friend <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots">Red_Pink_Dots</a>. </p><p>RPD's artwork just goes right to the heart of the story, and is perfect. Thank you, my Elton ❤️❤️❤️</p><p>The song that I listened to is The Carpenters' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR1ujXx2p-I">Merry Christmas, Darling</a>. The title that RPD chose (since I was more than useless with titles this time!) comes from the lyrics of the song:<br/><i>Merry Christmas darling</i><br/><i>We're apart that's true</i><br/><i>But I can dream and <b>in my dreams</b></i><br/><i>I'm Christmas-ing with you</i></p><p>Please note that there are spoilers for s07e10: Faith, as this story is set right after that case and we get Tony's thoughts about it.<br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <a href="https://i.imgur.com/oNp2ERC.png"></a>
  
</p><p>It had been a truly long and unbelievably exhausting week at work and Tony DiNozzo was ready to call it quits. The crime they had just solved had been a hate crime, and the worst thing about it was that it had been perpetrated by one brother on another due to the fact that the victim had undergone a conversion to Islam. Tony couldn’t imagine hating something so much that he would kill his sibling for it, and he didn’t care what kind of ‘faith’ they thought they were standing up for. It was their brother, for god’s sake. Tony would have given everything to have a sibling to grow up with instead of the lonely childhood that he had had to endure, where he had not just been an only child but then his mother had died when he had been only eight and his father had never been around that much. Which was, technically, not something that Tony would ever complain about. He much preferred the days when he didn’t have to be at home to pour his father his scotch at the appointed hour, rain or shine. Those were the days that Senior tended to forget that Tony was his kid and not just a convenient human punching bag. Enduring was the best description Tony had for his childhood.</p><p>So, yeah, Tony just could not understand how someone could do something so terrible to their own brother because they thought it was an act of <i>faith</i>. That he himself had stopped believing in god when his mother had died, despite all his prayers, all his begging for god not to take his mother away from him, was no big secret. His own faith in god had died with his mother. For that reason alone, he had never understood the need to make war or fight people because their belief systems were different. To him, all belief systems were equally as unlikely to be real, and it would make no sense for him to stand up for any one belief. And for someone who had yearned to have a sibling, someone with whom he could share his troubles with, someone who would have been there to witness the humiliations and agony both emotional and physical that Senior had put him through, someone who would truly understand where he came from, to think about murdering someone with that kind of connection and love just because they decided to choose a different way to express their faith, a different way to worship? It was unthinkable. And it was heartbreaking.</p><p>Tony couldn’t believe it, and he just couldn’t understand it or understand how anyone could justify killing their sibling for this. In a way, Tony understood serial killers much better – they were psychopaths who had been shaped by their own life experiences and they didn’t feel emotions in the same way most humans did. They were monsters and they killed out of a certain compulsion. He understood that much better than he did someone who killed their own brother because they thought it was an act of faith. Another nail in the coffin of god, in his opinion. If god really existed, then why would they allow people to commit atrocities in their name? A question that Tony had asked himself for many years.</p><p>And even though Tony did not have a sibling and was an only child, he felt that old pain of wanting someone to know him, back when he was a child. If he’d had a brother, he would have had no trouble accepting it if his brother had chosen to convert to Islam. He would have been a good brother and loved him, no matter what. Their shared childhood would have been enough for Tony to forgive his brother anything and everything. Tony wouldn’t have allowed anything to come between he and his brother. Not in a million years. Tony felt that he would have done his best to love his sibling and protect him, no matter what his brother might choose to do or believe. Especially if his brother had had to go through the same terrible and painful childhood that he had had to endure.</p><p>Not that Tony liked to sit around and mope about the past. He wanted to keep moving forward and making a new life for himself. Making his own happiness. He knew that sitting around and waiting for things to fall in his lap was an exercise in futility. He had to actively choose to do something in order to make anything happen for himself. Most of his childhood had been a demonstration of the futility of doing everything the right way, doing everything that was expected of you and hoping that that was enough to get you what you wanted. It had been anything but rewarding. His life hadn’t taken a turn for the better until he decided to rebel and purposefully get kicked out of a number of exclusive boarding schools, so much so that Senior ended up sending him to Remington Military Academy as a last ditch attempt at getting him to toe the line.</p><p>Of course, there, Tony had met the one man who had helped turn his entire life around. Coach Tanner, who had taken him under his wing despite the fact that Tony had been angry at the world, angry at the fact that his father couldn’t seem to love him, no matter what he did to try to earn it, and who had decided that he would stop being the kind of person that anyone would care about. Why bother trying when nobody loved him, when not even his own father could love him? It had to be his faults, his deficiencies that made him so unlovable. At the time, Tony couldn’t see how Senior’s behavior wasn’t somehow his fault, and even all these years later, Tony still had trouble holding on to his own sense of self, and what was right and wrong, when Senior was around.</p><p>But Coach Tanner had seen through it all and seen the sad, lonely kid underneath all that aggression and resentment. He had helped bring him out of that phase and encouraged him to play basketball and football. Participate in life at the military school. Choose to be an active participant in his own life and excel, for once. It was not an exaggeration to say that Coach Tanner had saved his life. Tony ended up with a basketball scholarship to OSU, and it had been the ticket away from Senior’s influence. He had been able to choose what to do with his life after that, and for that, he would always be grateful to Coach Tanner. That man had been everything to him. That man had showed him that not all men were like his own father, that a man didn’t have to be rich or puff himself up at every turn to be a good man. That a man could want to be helpful, even to an angry kid that he didn’t need to care about. It was the first inkling he had had that he didn’t need to measure his own worth using the yardstick of his father’s love or approval. That he could choose who he wanted to be and what it was that was important to him for his own reasons that had nothing to do with Senior’s shallow appraisal of everything from a monetary perspective.</p><p>Part of why he had majored in Phys Ed in college had been because he had hoped he could follow in Coach Tanner’s footsteps, be a gym teacher and coach high school kids. Make a life for himself where maybe, just maybe, he could make a difference and be what Coach Tanner had been to him, even if it was for just one student in his entire career. It would have made it worth it. But the fire in Baltimore his senior year at OSU had changed things yet again. Being a coach wasn’t the only way he could make a difference. Law enforcement became the goal after that.</p><p>Which brought Tony back to not being able to understand how someone could murder their own flesh and blood because their belief systems, their religions, whatever you wanted to call it, were no longer the same. Tony sighed as he shuffled into his apartment building, stopping at the bank of mailboxes and extracting the pile of mail out of his box. It had been several days since he’d been home and his box was full to bursting.</p><p>Tony dragged himself up the eight flights of stairs to his floor, not wanting to chance getting stuck in the building’s unreliable elevator, ignoring the burn in his legs. His backpack was slung over his shoulder, his go bag dangling on tired fingers and his mail set on top of the go-bag. He knew that he would get hot and sweaty by the time he reached the eighth floor, what with his heavy winter coat and the scarf that was around his neck, but it was winter in DC. While it wasn’t Alaska, it was still a cold winter and he needed all the layers outside. It was just a pain in the ass to get hot and sweaty trying to get up the stairs and he didn’t really feel like carrying all the winter clothing in his arms given he that he was already weighed down with bags, so he just did his best to ignore the perspiration dripping down his spine by the time he got to the third floor.</p><p>He was still thinking about family and wondering why the hell Gibbs would have voluntarily estranged himself from his father. There were some issues there, obviously, and Gibbs was nothing if not someone who had his own problems, and obviously intractable if he hadn’t spoken to his father in that long, and as far as Tony could tell, Jackson Gibbs had seemed like a nice person, if perhaps a little nosy. Kind of reminded him of himself, in a way. It made him uncomfortable to think that one day Gibbs would decide to turn his back on Tony as well. If a man could do that to his own kin, cut him off so completely it was as if they never existed, then there would be absolutely no problems doing it to someone they worked with, no matter the fact that Tony would be devastated should Gibbs decide to cut ties with him for some real or imagined slight.</p><p>Tony was a good judge of character – he had been raised by Senior, after all. He knew what a bad father looked like. Jackson Gibbs seemed like someone who would have been a good father. Tony didn’t understand how Gibbs could throw his father away just like that, when the man had obviously not spent Gibbs’ entire childhood berating him and making him feel completely inadequate, and when drunk off his ass, would find reasons to beat the shit out of him. Tony could tell that Jackson was a genuinely nice man who did his best to be a good person. Sometimes Tony really felt like he needed to show Gibbs the kind of father that he should hold a grudge against, and kick him into appreciating what family he did have left, instead of only mourning for those that had left him too early to the exclusion of everyone else remaining in his life. Only people who knew that they were loved would do that. People like Tony, who knew that even their own father didn’t love them, would never turn away from said father, just in case they missed that one opportunity that Senior might want to actually express something other than disapproval for them. Even though intellectually, logically, Tony knew that it would never happen. But the thought of closing that door forever, banishing his father, that was something he could not imagine himself doing. Gibbs’ estrangement with Jackson was something Gibbs had chosen because unlike Tony, Gibbs <i>knew</i> that his father loved him. No matter what Gibbs did, his father would be there when he finally regained his sanity and want to restart that relationship, and he exploited that knowledge. It was a luxury that Tony did not have, and an emotion that he had never experienced.</p><p>Shit, he was really getting maudlin and philosophical. Christmas always did that and he didn’t have much else to do but think as he dragged himself up the stairs. He missed his mother so much at Christmas. She had always gone all out to make it a special time of year for him. Tony might have only ever had eight Christmases with his mother, and several of those, he couldn’t even remember because he had been too young. But he still remembered the way his mother sang Christmas songs, and sat at her piano and played Christmas carols while Tony sang for her. There was always music in the house, and she would always have a big tree that she and Tony would decorate together. They would make caramel popcorn and watch <i>It’s A Wonderful Life</i>. She would be pretty drunk by the end of the movie, and Tony would be the one to help her into bed. But she would spend the entire day with him, Senior joining them maybe for a few minutes before he left to go conduct business or whatever the hell it was that Tony’s father did with himself on Christmas day. And for that entire day, Tony would feel like he was the luckiest boy in the world and all these years later, the memory of his mother’s love for him was strongest during those Christmases that they had shared, just the two of them.</p><p>His mother’s love was something that he had <i>never</i> doubted. She might have had to drink a lot to cope with a life with Senior, but Tony knew that his mother loved him. That was never something he questioned. And even though she had been dead for three decades now, Tony still missed her every single day. She had been the only person to have ever loved him, unconditionally, without ever asking him for anything in return or asking him to earn his place in her heart. Then she died and his world had changed. How could he <i>not</i> miss her on a daily basis? But Christmas was especially the time that made him extra sad and miss her even more.</p><p>When he finally got to his floor, he trudged down the hallway to his front door. He let himself in and kicked the door shut behind him with a sigh. Finally. Home. His sanctuary. He dropped his bags right by the door, ensured that all the locks were engaged, then shrugged out of his coat and scarf, tossing them carelessly on the arm of the sofa. He picked up the clicker and turned his TV on, just so there would be noise in the apartment. It made him feel less alone. Then he fed Kate and had a nice chat with her, wanting to make sure that she had been OK for the few days that Tony had been gone. He paid a neighbor kid to swing by and feed Kate when cases kept him away from home for several days, but still, he loved the goldfish and enjoyed her quiet company. Finally, he went to the bathroom. After a long, hot shower, he dressed in a soft, worn hoodie and sweatpants and padded into the kitchen. It was late on Christmas Eve and he wasn’t sure if any place would still be open and delivering, so he scrounged up a frozen tv dinner from the depths of his empty freezer and stuck it in the microwave. Not that he enjoyed eating machine made frozen single-serve meals pumped out from some factory somewhere, but he really was too tired to go to the corner store to pick up some fresh items. All he had in the pantry were dried and canned goods, and at this point, he just needed to eat something and go to bed. He would worry about getting groceries and cooking food for himself in the morning.</p><p>While the microwave was going, he cracked open a beer and retrieved his go bag, throwing it in the laundry room. He should have time to wash everything later as they had been given the next two days off. Not that that mattered, at times. Whether they were off or not, it seemed that if a case popped up that Vance or Gibbs or the SecNav or whoever the hell it might be decided that was a case for the MCRT, then they would all be called in, days off be damned. Tony knew that he should really start a load of laundry but fuck it, it was the first time he’d been home in days, so forgive him if he just wanted to eat and go to bed and worry about everything after a good night’s sleep.</p><p>Besides, here’s hoping that Gibbs would decide not to take a case – for once – since his father was in town. But for all Tony knew, maybe Jackson being there would make it so Gibbs would jump at the chance of a case so he could get rid of the poor guy. Poor man. Jackson had told him why he was in town, that he had had to shoot and kill someone in defense of himself and his store. Jackson told Tony this even before he told Gibbs, Tony was sure. But then, Tony had made it a point to be friendly with Jackson from the first time he met the man, and he’d also continued to send Jackson holiday cards and even called to speak to him every so often.</p><p>It killed Tony to see the man be starved for news about his own son, so Tony had done his best to fill in the blanks for Jackson, as much as he could. So yeah, he knew why Jackson had come to DC for Christmas and he really hoped that for once Gibbs would take the time to really listen to his father. That’s what Tony felt he needed, he just needed for his kid to listen to him, take his concerns and feelings seriously, and just not be a fucking bastard about things for once. Think of someone other than himself and his own precious feelings. Realize that the world consisted of other people whose feelings and existences were just as important as Gibbs’. It seemed to Tony as if sometimes Gibbs just didn’t understand that people were real and what he did and what he said affected them. And sometimes Gibbs just refused to care that his actions and his words affected those closest to him.</p><p>But that was Tony’s bias right there. He would choose to side with Jackson over Gibbs any day. Even if that would earn him the worst head slaps, ever. Jackson was a good man and a good father, and Tony was hard pressed to think of Gibbs as being anything close to being a good son to him. What Tony would have done to have a father like Jackson instead of Senior. Well. That was life, wasn’t it? Those who had love didn’t value it, and those who did value it couldn’t for the life of them find it for themselves.</p><p>Tony decided to change the direction that his thoughts were going in. Time to distract himself. His dinner was ready, anyway.</p><p>Tony had the TV turned on, his stack of unopened mail, his microwaved TV dinner and bottle of beer on the coffee table and he found <i>Love, Actually</i> playing on one of the movie channels, so he left it on. It made him feel at home to hear English spoken with British accents, it reminded him of his mother. Keeping an ear on the movie, he methodically went through his mail, sorting through it and piling all the junk mail and catalogs to one side, bills on another. He received a few holiday cards from his frat brothers, the core group that still kept in touch and still tried to take vacations together, even if their vacations tended to include wives and children and be a lot less about how much booze they could consume and more about hanging out and enjoying each other’s company.</p><p>Lately, they had all also been trying to set Tony up with a number of women (and men, since they were well aware of his gender preferences or lack thereof) that they thought he would hit it off with which, while it was sweet of them but was truly an exercise in futility. He couldn’t really see any way that a real relationship would stand a chance of surviving, what with the kind of hours Tony had to put in at work. Wendy had always complained about how much Tony worked, back when he was with Baltimore PD and he worked even more hours now than back then. Gibbs was a stern taskmaster and Tony had apparently not outgrown the urge to do everything he could to please a disapproving father figure. And like Senior, Gibbs was practically impossible to please.</p><p>And when Tony told his friends that he didn’t have time for a relationship because his boss was too demanding, they started sending him job postings. Tony hadn’t even told them about the job offers that he regularly received from other alphabet agencies in DC. Leaving NCIS was something he couldn’t really consider at this point in time since they were the only family he had left. His frat brothers were scattered throughout the country these days, and although they kept in touch as best they could, everyone was busy with their own lives. The people he worked with at NCIS were as close to family as Tony had, and the thought of leaving them and striking out on his own was just too intimidating. Once upon a time, it had been much easier for Tony to move from one job to another, to keep on seeking a place – the right place – for himself. But now, he felt entrenched. Leaving NCIS would be traumatic. And he would need to be absolutely <i>certain</i> that the job he was going to would be worth it. That was the part that was different now. Tony wasn’t brave enough to jump in with both feet at this time. He wasn’t particularly happy at NCIS anymore, but it wasn’t completely horrible either. And the fear that rejecting this family to get a new job would leave him even more isolated than he already was.</p><p>Tony turned his thoughts away from his job and the current level of dissatisfaction he was experiencing at work. He’d always loved working at NCIS, always loved being part of the dysfunctional NCIS family, but lately it had felt to him as if things were weighing too heavily on the dysfunction than the family. Things were beginning to be unfairly skewed against him, as if his team were no longer behind him all the way, and he didn’t really know what to do about it. Not thinking about it was about as far as he had come to dealing with it.</p><p>Tony’s thoughts were distracted by the next piece of mail. It was a large-ish envelope and the return address was his late Uncle Clive’s solicitors in London. Wondering what fresh hell this might bring, Tony sighed. He’d told Gibbs and the team that he’d received nothing, even going so far as to claim that he owed his cousin Crispian money since he’d written Clive an IOU for money he’d loaned him for college so many years ago, but in reality, Tony had been left a good amount of money and even some property. Not the kind of money that made it so he would be set for life, but certainly enough to not have to worry too much about money for a good few years if he didn’t have a job. But there had been a lot of paperwork and things to sign, he’d even hired one of his frat brothers to represent him in the whole thing and have someone explain to him what it all meant in words that he would understand, especially since it had been such a busy time at work when Clive had died. Tony wondered if this would mean a call to his lawyer to understand the documents that he had been sent.</p><p>Although, it didn’t feel too hefty. Maybe it was just a courtesy holiday card?</p><p>Tony sliced the envelope open using the switchblade in his pocket and emptied it onto his coffee table, his unappetizing dinner completely forgotten now. There was a smaller envelope in it embossed with the solicitor’s logo and he sliced that open. Inside was indeed, a courtesy holiday card, very classy, heavy cardstock, expensive, also with the solicitor’s company logo embossed on it, wishing him a merry Christmas and happy holidays. There was a letter sized piece of paper which Tony skimmed, the contents of which made him gape.</p><p>The letter had been handwritten by his cousin Crispian, claiming that Uncle Clive had been holding on to a Christmas card that Tony’s mother had wanted Clive to hold on to for her, and mail to Tony the Christmas after his twenty-first birthday, and somehow after Tony’s mother had died, Clive had been unable to deal with the grief of losing his sister and boxed everything she owned and left it in the attic of the ancestral Paddington home. Crispian had found the boxes and started going through them, and after the solicitors had a chance to document all the items that had once belonged to Tony’s mother, they would be sending it all to Tony as of course, these now belonged to him. But this card that had been supposed to be sent to Tony for his twenty-first Christmas was something Crispian felt had been delayed long enough so he had asked the solicitors to send it to Tony right away, which, coincidentally, was right in time for Christmas.</p><p>Tony looked at the old envelope that had also fallen out of the main envelope. On the back of it was his name ‘Anthony’ written in the distinctive and lovely cursive handwriting that had been his mother’s. Tony’s heart was in his mouth and just the sight of his name in his mother’s handwriting on a piece of mail that he had never seen before caused him to gasp and for his eyes to burn with tears.</p><p>With trembling fingers, Tony carefully sliced the envelope open, not wanting to mar it in any way. He carefully extracted the card, which Tony recognized to be one that his mother had painted herself. It was a watercolor of their old house in Long Island, blanketed in snow.</p><p>Tony blinked at the card just looking at it and carefully touching it, touching his mother’s signature at the bottom corner of the card, just focusing on breathing. His mother had made him a card that she had wanted to give to him, had given it to her brother for safekeeping as even back then, it was obvious that Senior could not be entrusted with anything like this, and now, almost two decades after she meant for it to get to Tony, here he was finally looking at the lovely painting that his mother had made for him. Just for him. A personalized card that nobody else would ever top. It was real and tangible proof of her love for him.</p><p>He hesitated to flip the card open, not sure if he was ready to look at more of his mother’s elegant longhand script, feeling a little like he was facing a Schrödinger's cat sort of problem, although a lot less grisly and radioactive, if you knew what he meant. If he stayed there and never opened the card, then the possibilities were endless – the cat could be both dead and alive – his mother could have sent him the world. But he wouldn’t know what it was his mother had sent him. And if he open the card, then he would know what his mother sent him, but then there wouldn’t be any other possibility – the cat was probably dead, let’s face it, this was Tony’s stupid DiNozzo luck at work – and he didn’t know whether he would be getting something lucid from his mother or some drunken note. It was hard to tell. One would hope that a card to be saved for one’s child’s twenty-first Christmas would be something that had been planned and well thought out, but one thing Tony had learned about his mother was that her intentions had always been better than her execution. Alcoholics were that way, sometimes.</p><p>He should just stop here and just be thankful that she had made him this beautiful card. Just the envelope with his name written on it in her handwriting was enough. It was already more than anything he possessed. Thanks to a stepmother sometime in the past, destroying things his mother had made and pictures of her out of some fit of jealousy, not caring that there was a grieving child who would have wanted those things, and not really understanding that the problem wasn’t Tony’s mother. Tony could have told her that. Tony’s mother had been just as unhappy to be married to Senior as the stepmother had been. The problem was with Senior and not with Tony’s mother or any of his other wives.</p><p>He picked the card up, meaning to put it back in the envelope, but a picture fell out of it. He stared at it – a photo he did not remember ever seeing. There was his mother, gorgeous with a wide smile, and Tony at between the ages of one and two, perhaps, sitting in his mother’s lap and seeming to be laughing happily. Tony’s eyes burned with tears again. There was his mother’s face, and he traced his mother’s wide smile and bright, hopeful eyes with his index finger. He could tell that she was joyful here, joyful that she had her son in her life, maybe? Tony hoped so, at least.</p><p>Tony opened the card and saw that there was a folded piece of paper pressed into it. The inside of the card itself had his mother’s handwriting writing out ‘Love Came Down at Christmas’, a poem that Tony recognized, by Christina Rossetti:</p><p>        <i>Love came down at Christmas,</i><br/>
<i>Love all lovely, Love Divine,</i><br/>
<i>Love was born at Christmas,</i><br/>
<i>Star and Angels gave the sign.</i></p><p>        <i>Love shall be our token,</i><br/>
<i>Love be yours and love be mine,</i><br/>
<i>Love to God and all men,</i><br/>
<i> Love for plea and gift and sign.</i></p><p>Tony couldn’t help but smile at that. That was a poem that his mother used to quote, especially at Christmas time. She had loved him, and he had loved her, and it had been enough for him. He had never asked for more. And now that he had done it, he realized that not opening the card would have been a huge mistake. He felt so much better seeing a picture of himself and his mother, both of them so happy, and this poem that always made him think of his mother, written in his mother’s own hand? What could be better.</p><p>He squared his shoulders and unfolded the piece of paper that had been inserted into the card. It was his mother’s special stationery, and he could still smell her perfume on it. He took a deep breath, inhaling that scent that made him remember all the Christmases that they had sat together, eating caramel corn, watching movies, decorating the house, singing to each other and with each other. Oh, how he had loved his mother and how she had loved him.</p><p>The date on the letter was the week before the Christmas after he turned one. Twenty years prior to when his mother had intended him to read it. He read on.</p><p>
  <i>My darling Anthony,</i>
</p><p>
  <i>As I write this, you are crawling around the room, pulling on the decorations on the Christmas tree and trying to taste everything. You have a terrible habit of putting anything and everything into your mouth, but I know that you’re just trying to learn things, and taste is a sense. You also have the good sense not to put things that you did not like the taste of into your mouth more than once, so I know you are learning to distinguish good from bad. You are the light of my life, Anthony. Never forget that.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>You are such a good baby, Anthony. You never cry unless you have a reason to, and once you learned how to smile, you are always smiling and laughing, cooing happily at everything. You are the embodiment of joy, and you bring so much joy to my life. I cannot imagine life without you!</i>
</p><p>
  <i>What does a mother say to a son that would mean something twenty years from now? I honestly don’t know what words of wisdom I could impart to you that you wouldn’t already know after being alive for twenty-one years, but what I do know is that I shall always love you. I loved you from the moment I knew you existed, and that I was carrying you in my body. I loved you even more after you were born and I could hold you in my arms and shower you with all my love. The love that you have given back to me without question is the most valuable thing in my life. Your smile is everything to me, my firstborn child.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I hope that when you read this letter, I am sitting with you and holding your hand. No doubt you would have also experienced some of life’s disappointments, as that is a part of growing up and a normal part of life. I hope that I would have been there, holding your hand and helping you through the good times as well as the bad. But, if for whatever reason I am not, I hope you know that I will always be with you in your heart, and holding your hand in spirit, whether it is to help you take your first steps, or to navigate your way through your very first heartbreak, for heartbreak will find us all. I hope that I’ve been there for you and been strong enough to be your rock. There are days when I don’t feel at all strong and I worry that you will suffer for my weaknesses.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Well, that got sad quickly, didn’t it? I will do my best to be a good mother to you, Anthony. I promise you that whatever else happens, you will not ever doubt how much I love you. And that to me, you are the most important being in this entire universe. My miracle.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I hope that you have grown up into a strong, strapping young man, and that you are filled with hope for the future. I know that you will be the kind of man who will make a difference in the world, to contribute, the way my brothers have. In my dreams, I can see you in a life of service, doing your best to better the lives of others, to make the world a better place. I see you one day doing something, not necessarily something lucrative or profitable, but something that makes you happy and makes a difference to other people. I can already tell that you will be the kind of man for whom being kind is more important than being rich. I hope that you will choose the path that makes you happy and live an honest life, and not one that is filled with lies and deceit. That way lies destruction, my son. Take it from me. Don’t let life taint you. Be true to yourself and be a good man.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Christmas will soon be here. I want to start some Christmas traditions with you this year, even though you are still too young to enjoy caramel corn and do not understand movies, I hope that you will learn to enjoy these with me. For this one day, we can be together and pretend that all is well with the world, block out all our unhappiness, and just have one day filled with love and joy. That is what I will strive to do for you, my son. Because you deserve all the happiness and joy in this world. Every day with you in my life is like a holiday. You have made me feel as if my life is worth something, because you are my son and you are worth everything.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>In the words of Christina Rossetti, ‘Love shall be our token, Love be yours and love be mine’. I hope that you have had and will continue to have a life filled with love, for that is what you truly deserve. And if I cannot be there with you to hold your hand, this Christmas on the year that you are twenty-one years old, I hope that you will know how much I love you and that I can only dream that I am spending every Christmas with you. Merry Christmas, my darling son.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>With all my love,</i><br/>
<i>Elizabeth</i>
</p><p>Tony looked away from his mother’s words, his eyes brimming with tears. He realized that his cheeks were wet and his eyes continued to keep burning hot with more tears. For a few minutes, he gave into his emotions, weeping for all the years that he had lost with his mother. All the love he had lost. But slowly, he realized that he hadn’t really lost her. She was still here with him, still watching over him, still loving him. And tomorrow, he would get up, make her special caramel corn recipe and watch <i>It’s a Wonderful Life</i>, and think about her all day. And when he had to go back to work, he would do so willingly, since he was living a life of service. To serve and protect, even. He hadn’t chosen a career that would bring him riches, but instead a difficult one, filled with nothing but hard work and head slaps, but he was making an honest living and trying to make a difference in the lives of those he served, alive and dead, that he came across. It was what his mother had wanted for him, and he had done it even though he hadn’t even known that about her. He could hold his head up high and know that he was making her proud. And that was <i>enough</i>. He had somehow grown up to be what his mother wished him to be – someone who was completely unlike Senior in all the important ways – and that was enough. <i>He</i> was enough.</p><p>And as he sat there, he could almost feel her holding his hand, as she sat next to him on his couch. He still had a family. He had always had someone who loved him. And that was enough to give him the courage to want more for himself. Whatever he chose to do going forward, he knew that he would not be doing it alone, and that he would always feel his mother holding his hand through it all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>That's it. Hope you liked the story. Go on and check out RPD's <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28009110">art masterpost</a>! As always, I can't thank you enough for the fun I have when we collaborate, the entire process is always wonderful with you. I love you, ma cherie! ❤️❤️❤️</p><p>We built the story around the picture of a baby Michael Weatherly and his mother, and thought about what would happen if Tony received a Christmas card from her, years after the fact.</p><p>The Carpenters' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR1ujXx2p-I">Merry Christmas, Darling</a> is the song that I kept hearing Tony's mother sing to him, and it seems to work for the story.</p><p>The poem quoted in the card is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Came_Down_at_Christmas">Love Came Down at Christmas</a>, by Christina Rossetti. I didn't include the whole poem, but just a portion of it in the story.</p><p>Once again, I'm also going to take the time to invite you to sign up for the 2021 NCIS Reverse Bang Challenge! Come and join the fun, if you are writers or artists! Artists can <a href="https://ncis-bang.livejournal.com/107865.html">sign up here</a>, and authors can <a href="https://ncis-bang.livejournal.com/108245.html">sign up here</a>! </p><p>There will be another story/artwork posted tomorrow! Take care and stay safe. ❤️❤️❤️<br/>-j<br/>xoxo</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28009110">Art for In My Dreams</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots">Red_Pink_Dots</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
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